One of the best ways to build a connection with your community as a creator is to spend time with them - Lives being one of the best ways to do this. However, it’s also the one option that most creators don’t take advantage of - mostly because they’re nervous about putting themselves out there.

Live videos can be extremely uncomfortable. What if you mess up? What is no one comes? What if the people that do come don’t interact? Will Lives ever not feel weird?

This week, we’re here with Emma Ragland, owner of Ragland Clothing Co, who has truly mastered the art of hosting an incredible Instagram Live. Emma started her business when she was only 17 years old and runs it currently as her full-time job - with Instagram Lives being a huge driver of her income.

Today we’re answering all of your questions about lives on social media. Emma shares her top tips on how to bring traffic to your Lives, what you can do if you’re ever feeling awkward, and how you can use Lives as a way to drive real traffic to your profile/business.

Many creators simply don’t know what they’re getting into when they get into this industry. Not growing quickly, low engagement rates, constant imposter syndrome, trying to “niche down”, the frequent rejection from brands we’ve been working hard to impress - these are all struggles that creators everywhere deal with incredibly frequently.

This week, we’re here with Jordyn Rush of Your Pal Jordyn, who is a lifestyle, fashion, and travel content creator focusing on incorporating a bold, vibrant element into the lives of everyone in her audience. With a background in both sales and marketing, Jordyn has been able to take her social media career full-time in 2 years.

Today we’re sharing our experiences of going through the struggles that each and every single creator reading right now goes through no matter how long you’ve been at this or how many followers you have.

What do you do when everyone around you is growing faster than you? Will brands still take you on even when your engagement rate is low? How do you deal with imposter syndrome as it sneaks into your life more than you’d like it to? Why won’t brands pay me my rates or anything at all?

As self-employed creators, we need to learn to handle our money in a much more strategic way than a classic W2 employee. BUT finding out how to do this and be prepared for these types of situations is hard. Most of us don’t have someone to guide us. We look on the internet, but the information we find is confusing and lacks clarity for someone who doesn’t understand legal jargon.

This week, we’re here with Sabrina St. Peter, who is an established bookkeeper, and the owner of Smart Spark Business Solutions, where she remotely assists small business owners in the marketing space - including content creators - with their bookkeeping needs. She strives to make bookkeeping accessible to all businesses no matter if they are just starting out or have been around the block.

Today we’re answering all of the questions you have about money management as a content creator. How can you prepare for taxes? What’s the best way to keep track of your income and expenses? Can you count travel, beauty services, and meals as business expenses?

How many times have you seen creators at a glamorous event like RevolveFest and thought "damn, how do I get on the guestlist"? Many times, brands work hand-in-hand with publicists like Mackenzie Judge of Gal Media to give their offerings new life via events, installations, influencer campaigns, and creator collaborations.

Mackenzie dove headfirst into public relations and has found her passion in planning events and activations for her agency's clients. She's incredibly invested in the beauty industry as well, even donning her own podcast, "The Blondie Beauty" where she's interviewed huge names in the industry like Deborah Lippmann, Jessica Chia, and more.

So, what does a publicist look for when recruiting influencers? How can we get invited to these out-of-a-dream events? How can we work hand-in-hand with publicists and create great relationships with them so that we can help make the brand’s digital advertising dreams come true (and ours in the process)? We're sharing the answers to all of the questions and more in this week's episode.

As someone who's been in the media world for over 12 years, Tom Boyd knows a thing or two about being a creative. He believes that creators are brands and that they need to learn how to position themselves as such. That's exactly what he's done on his own personal platforms garnering an audience of over 68k.

Today we’re answering all of the questions you have about being a BRAND as a creator. How can you stand out to brands with unique concepts? How can you position yourself in a way that will appeal to your audience and fulfill you? How can YOU be a trusted brand as a creator?

Have you ever thought about what you would do if Instagram or TikTok completely folded tomorrow? This week, we’re here with Ashlyn Greer, owner of digital personal styling concierge, Fashivly. Her business completely blew up, and she was able to take her influence off of social media and build a loyal community of customers.

Today, we’re answering the big questions that all creators face: What kind of business can I create to sustain myself off the internet? How do I expand my influence? And what does it take to start a business?

Why are brands just GHOSTING you? You must be the problem, right?

In today’s episode, we’re here Justin Moore, AKA the Creator Wizard, who is a successful sponsorship coach and agency owner who dove into the industry after years of helping his wife, April, with her sponsorship success about 10 years ago. His family combined has over 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. You could say he knows a thing or two about the business.

Today, we’ll be answering the big question that all creators face: Why the heck are brands ghosting me? Did you know there are at least nine different reasons for this? Listen now for the scoop.

Can you relate? You’re ready to turn your online influence into a profitable, self-sustaining business, but you’re unsure of the logistics of running a legitimate business. That’s exactly why I want you to meet MY mentor, Deana Gore (who also so happens to be my cousin!). If you’ve ever heard a great piece of business advice from me, chances are she taught it to me or at least influenced me to learn it.

She herself is the incredibly successful small business owner of Wilbraham Candle, but she’s also been the Vice President of People and Business Resources at a multi-million dollar national parking management company for the last 15 years. Today, we’ll be sharing everything a creator needs to know how being a legal business, staying safe with the nitty-gritty of small business laws, and negotiating your way to financial freedom.

We all have things about ourselves that we're nervous about sharing, but Reagan Campbell is the perfect example of why you should display your "imperfections" and run your business with confidence. As someone with over 326k TikTok followers and a Port Wine Stain birthmark, you can imagine the internet trolls that she endures. In this episode and on her platforms, Reagan has taken all of that negativity and turned it into something beautiful by spreading awareness and helping her community learn the power of confidence.

So many creators have a tough time building a profitable business of their online influence, but talent managers like Samantha Zinkovich of Zink Talent, help their clients do this all. day. long. In this episode, Samantha dives deep into how she lands some huge partnerships for her clients at Zink Talent, an agency she started, including what to charge, how she creates relationships with brands and some valuable negotiation tips.

Influencer platforms are one of our favorite ways to connect with some of the biggest brands in the world, and Hashtag Paid is at the top of that list. Today, we’re chatting with Hashtag Paid’s incredible social media manager, Danny Desatnik, about the inside scoop into having success monetizing as a creator on influencer platforms. How do they choose creators? What trends are brands loving? What’s a day-in-the-life as someone managing the social platforms for every influencer’s favorite place to find brand collabs? All those questions and more as answered in this incredibly valuable episode.

In this week's episode, we're breaking down influencer management with my lovely manager, Becca Folsom of Blogist — an influencer management and strategy agency that helps influencers connect with more brands and overall have more success on their platforms.

Becca shares her perspective on how influencers can be successful in getting a manager and working with them successfully and how to work with more brands even if you're not ready for a manager.

At 23-years young, Gigi Robinson has become a pro at blending mental health and social media into her day-to-day content. She's been able to master multiple different forms of content creation such as social media, podcasting, and public speaking to help instill confidence in her audience of over 150,000 people. She’s been featured in Vogue Business, Teen Vogue, The Today Show, Bustle, Business Insider, and many more. Today, she's sharing her tips on becoming a confident creator who knows their shit.

Accountability, mindset, self-care — all words that we’ve heard a lot lately, but have you really dived into them just yet? Today, we’re getting deep with Bobby Hobert — host of “It's The Bearded Man Podcast”, a show focused on helping people reach their inner potential. He's also the founder of “Stay Dialed In” App, an accountability community at your fingertips for helping you strive towards your goals, and the Podcast Performance Manager for Liquid I.V. Bobby gives us the low-down on how to be your own best hype man/woman and believe in yourself to make progress and grow.

For me, Pinterest is one of the more confusing platforms to master. So, I decided to bring on my lovely friend, Heather Gacek, who sees MILLIONS of Pinterest views each month to see how she masters the platform. In this episode, we go over everything from her step-by-step process of posting to Pinterest to maximize Reach as well as what she thinks about Pinterest investing $20 million in creators.

As an influencer, what if you were to get an inside look from the brand side of creator partnerships? That’s exactly what today’s guest Mollie Guerrero did when she joined the team at HerCampus/InfluenceHer Collective. She’s part creator and part influencer campaign manager, so she’s truly has a 360 view on the entire partnership process, and today she’s sharing that with us.

In the social media industry, information for influencers is not as readily accessible as it may be in other industries which is why we always try to provide you with as much transparency as we can. Today, we chatted with Jules and Jasmine of Coded Agency who gave us an inside look at how they design and execute incredible influencer campaigns for their brands and create long-lasting relationships with influencers.